Variations and house rules

[Damocles]

So I got PTA a while ago and am pretty psyched about it. And one thing I particularly like is that it seems to lend itself to fiddling around with and expanding on the basic concept. Here are some rather brainstormy thoughts on that:

-Dice sizes. By using different kinds of dice you can shift around the probabilities of narration rights without affecting chances of success.
You could have the Producer use different dice than the players to shift the story-control around. You could use different dice for traits than for budget/fan mail, making it more or less likely that you will get narration rights when your protagonistis involved in the scene.

For a grim series, you could use larger dice instead of more dice to represent screen presence (the spotlight player gets more control over the episode, but the character doesn't succeed more). Or you could just let players decide which decide to use according how much they feel like narrating.

-Different season lengths. This is an obvious idea and I just mention it because I'm not sure how you'd distribute screen presence. Could you have a generalized formula? I dunno.

-Double traits. It's kind of the munchkin option, but could you do this?:

Edge #1: Warrior Training
Edge #2: More Warrior Training

I'm thinking it might actually be appropriate for some characters.

-Occasional guest players. I'm thinking guest stars would make a good metaphor here. Maybe a miniature story arc of just 1,2,3 for a nine episode season or something like that.

-The main bad guy as a protagonist. Not really a variation, just a particular option that isn't mentioned directly in the book, I think. He'd probably have his spotlight in the last episode of the season for the big showdown.

-Troupe style play. Several characters for each players. All kinds of options there.

For instance, you could have a secondary cast which gets every third round (or 1 in three scenes from each player for more flexibility) and has an overall lower Screen Presence, not appearing at all in some episodes (like a story arc of 1,2,0,0,1). X-Men: Evolution had a B-cast that worked something like that.

Or for a series focused stongly on a central hero, players could take turns playing him in addition to their own character, ideally when Screen Presence for their non-shared character is at 1. The central hero might have a non-standard screen presence distribution too, but I'm not sure what would work best. Maybe he'd always be at SP 2.

-Blackadder style. Make different characters for the new season, but keep one trait and/or the issue the same.

-Flashbacks as in Lost. This'd be fairly easy. Just give the spotlight player two turns one for now and one for the flashback.

-Different metaphors. Comics, movie serials, radio plays, others?

-What about one-shots? Prep time is fairly low, it ought to work nicely. But how do you handle it? Just having everyone at SP 2 like for a pilot would work, but somehow I want something more clever than that. Different Screen Presences for different rounds, maybe?

-Nemesis as a trait?

I was thinking about how Connections work when the character is not actually on good terms with the connection. As I understand it, you might actually get your extra dice for the connection when intimidating or even beating up the character. (I was thinking of the typical scuzzy informer here)

And then I was thinking: Whoa! You could totally take your Nemesis as a Connection. Or you could be clever and take your dedication to defeating the nemesis as an edge, but that's probably a less likely option. Still, for your Inigo Montaya type of character you could just go the whole way and make the Nemesis your Issue, a Connection, and take a corresponding Edge.

Anyway. Sorry for the somewhat rambling nature of this post, but I wanted to get this stuff down before I forget it.

[John Harper]

You could use different dice for traits than for budget/fan mail, making it more or less likely that you will get narration rights when your protagonist is involved in the scene.

Say, that's a keen idea. I'll have to try that out.